Thursday

By Simon Taylor and Patrick McNally (Autosport 18 June 1970) Elford's gear ratio change did the trick, for on Thurdsay evening he became the first man ever to lap Le Mans in under 200 secs - despite the recently-adopted Ford chicane. The big white streamliner was now touching 227 mph, only a small improvement, but Vic was now really happy with the car's handling, and his best lap was 3m 19.8s. He said that an all-out effort with no traffic problems could have taken 4 secs off this. Vaccarella was still going were well, managing 3m 20.6s on this occasion, while Siffert was quickest Gulf man with 3m 21.1s. Sensation of the evening was brave Merzario, who produced a 21.3; the Ferrari were pretty trouble-free on Thursday apart from a perfect plague of punctures (nine!), whereas Rodriguez complained of poor brakes on his Gulf 917, and Siffert had a transistor ignition failure. Attwood said that his brakes had not been improved, and that instead the Salzburg mechanics had made various unwanted cockpit changes. Ickx, displaying his usual unruffled approach to the 24-hour event, did very little practice, being content to scrub a few tyres and bed in brake pads and discs; by contrast, Forghieri was having to restrain his more extrovert drivers from wearing out their cars trying to better Vaccarella's time.

The only serious incident in the whole of practice occurred in the 140 mph link just after White House halfway through the Thursday session. Brabham's Matra was coming up to pass Spoerry's Martini Porsche 908 which had moved to one side, apparently to let him through. When Matra was almost alongside the Porsche moved across again and the cars collided. Brabham kept the Matra under control, and brought it into the pits with slight bodywork damage, but the Porsche shot off the road into the bank and disintegrated. The engine was flung bodily down the road and the front suspension and steering wheel went in another direction, while the gearbox was found 50 yards away in a field. The wheel-less cockpit frame landed with Spoerry still strapped in it, and though the remains caught fire, the Swiss unstrapped himself and ran clear with nothing worse than a cut leg. From the lurid pictures of the accident that appeared in the French papers the next day, it seemed a really miraculous escape. Brabham had been well in the groove with his 650 Matra, setting fastest 3-litre time in 3m 32.2s, but the 660 was still not right and was wheeled away for an engine change, while the ENB Ferrari burnt out its clutch. The Ligier set fastest 2-litre time, but then a faulty oil pump produced bearing damage and it too got a new engine on Friday.

The Ferrari 512S driven by Ignazio Giunti/Nino Vacarella

The Matra MS 650 driven by Jack Brabham/Francois Cevert

Final practice times (starting drivers names first were):

If practice waer taken as indicating race form things looked good for Ferrari, with six cars in the fastest nie; furthermore, the Porsche team managers were going to have a stiff task persuading their drivers not to make a Grand Prix of it and try to beat each other. There is ineviteablty constant rivalry not only between Elford and the JW drivers, but even between Seppi and Pedro, and nobody knew better than David Yorke and John Wyer that a lack of discipline in this direction could be disasterous. It was also plain that Ferrari would properly try to send one car out in front as a hare to lure the Porsches on to engine and gearbox-breaking efforts. In their various hotels, while the mechanics worked in the garages and the drivers relaxed, the team managers spent Friday evening pondering on their tactics for the morrow. It lokked like being a titanic struggle.